Eileen:

Hello, and welcome to Soul of a Leader Podcast, where we ignite soulful conversations with leaders. In today’s episode, Dr. Alicia and Dr. Eileen sit with Johanna Jameson, the founder, and CEO of The Memory Farm to discuss leading with love.

 

Eileen:

Hello And welcome to Soul of a Leader. Today, we have Johanna Jameson from The Memory Farm in Elburn, Illinois. Johanna is an Illinois licensed clinical professional counselor and has worked at Rush University Medical Center, and also the Alzheimer’s Association. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with her family and friends, reading, and staying active with running and yoga classes. She’s also a level one yoga instructor and will lead yoga classes at The Memory Farm.

Eileen:

Prior to introducing her and saying hello, I’d like to share with you what The Memory Farm mission is. It’s to give purpose and dignity to people living with dementia by providing compassionate farm-based activities that promote cognitive, physical, social, and emotional wellbeing. To provide respite and education to caregivers, and to train the next generation of dementia care providers while maintaining the highest standards in dementia expertise and professional ethics. And one of her quotes on her website is, “not all those who wander are lost.” Welcome, Johanna. We are so glad to have you on our podcast today.

Johanna:

Thank you for having me.

Alicia:

Welcome, Johanna. I love that, The Memory Farm. How did you get connected or involved with The Memory Farm? How did you start it?

Johanna:

I was actually in a doctoral program for neuropsychology, and at the same time, I was working at the Alzheimer’s Association counseling caregivers. And I was trying to get some ideas for my dissertation. And while there’s a lot of gaps in research, of course, in the field of dementia, I kept coming back to some gaps in clinical care. All my caregivers would tell me that, “My loved one is so physically strong, even though their memory is not there.” And that’s when I was thinking, “We need something different,” Like a different style of care to fill this gap. And then I went and I visited an organic farm, and a light bulb just kind of went off and I thought, “Wow, this would be the perfect environment for someone living with dementia. It has all the things that we know work very well for people living with the disease. The horticultural therapy and animal therapy.” It was at that point that I dropped out of my program and found this fixer-upper farm, and the rest is history.

Eileen:

You’re the CEO and founder of The Memory Farm, is that right?

Johanna:

I am, I am, I am.

Eileen:

Well, share with me, how did you pick that quote for your website? “Not all those who wander are lost.” I really, really liked that.

Johanna:

Wandering is a behavior we typically see in the disease, and it is typically seen as a negative behavior, because it is, right? But when I will get my patients and I see them wandering, I don’t always necessarily look at them like they’re lost. They’re usually trying to access something that they probably have stored somewhere in their memory. And if we can just provide them a safe environment to express themselves, they might be able to access that. And I see that all the time here, at The Memory Farm. I had a client the other day who grabbed some of our gardening tools and created these perfectly straight lines, and then started picking up some seeds, and then watering them and then covering them with dirt. So that’s kind of how that quote developed.

Alicia:

Amazing.

Eileen:

So tell me, you came up with this idea, you’re the CEO and founder, how is this changing people’s lives? I mean, my breath was just taken away by the little story you just told me on how the environment changes one’s behavior who people might think are lost.

Johanna:

Well, it’s so incredible to see because a diagnosis of any type of dementia is just devastating for a family. And so many people think once that diagnosis is brought to them, that’s it, that’s the end, right? And so many people, after a diagnosis, they kind of lose their purpose and you kind of see them being lost in themselves. And I think here at The Memory Farm, we’re able to bring that back out, where there’s a lot of smiles and laughter here. And I hear from my care partners all the time that “I’ve never seen him this happy since the diagnosis. He has a purpose again, he has dignity again.”

Alicia:

Wow, amazing. So one of the things I’m connecting to you, and I want to go back a little bit is, “I stopped the dissertation,” part and you developed this farm. I would say, possibly you have found that missing gap or the materials or information that was missing when you went on that path to get your Ph.D. and this. So what would you say is your faith in a shared vision in this whole process of developing this farm?

Johanna:

My shared vision is to kind of change the way we look at memory care. We’ve seen the same old standard of care for so long, which is very institutional. And I want the shift to be towards more of a quality of life and dignity. And something that’s really important to me is if you visited a facility before, it seems very sterile. They were doing these very, very safe activities, which all activities should be safe, but I believe there should be a measure of… you could take a little risk to have a quality of life.

Johanna:

One of our clients the other day brought his sander and was sanding things, and you would never see that happening anywhere. And he just lit up when he was doing that. So my vision is just to change the focus of memory care.

Eileen:

Yeah. What a wonderful vision. What a way to really shift the paradigm around this disease. And when I look at your website, I heard you say sanding, but you know, you have therapies like gardening, animal therapy, safe wandering, yoga, memory farm market, and then the farmhouse. So, out of all those therapies, how do you know…does the person come to the farm, and then you let them wander to see which way they go? How do you know what one connects best or many, with all of them, as a leader? How do you assess that with your wonderful background?

Johanna:

We do a detailed intake. We kind of get some background from our clients, but we do have some clients who’ve never been on a farm. They’ve never done anything like this. So I do kind of let them wander and I expose them all to the different areas that we have on the farm. So I’ll give them some vegetables to feed the goats, I’ll put them in the garden or I’ll give them a paintbrush if they want to do art and I’ll see what they gravitate towards most. One important thing that remains firm is the language we use. So we always tell our clients that they’re here as volunteers, and they’re here to help us. So I always say, “there’s so much going on here, as you can see, we have a lot to fix and a lot we need help with, is there anything you can help me with?” And most of them will be like, “oh yes, let’s pull these weeds.”

Eileen:

I mean-

Alicia:

Oh, wow.

Eileen:

I mean, what a shift.

Alicia:

Yes.

Eileen:

Contributing, adding value, assessing their self-worth, but also healing. That’s what I heard.

Alicia:

Yes. And I also heard too, it seems like there’s something connected to them with the nature and mobility of who they are, that they can function around. It’s like you making them a part of the farm or a team, or as you said, a volunteer. So how do you…we use a lot of values, so what would be like your top three values that you kind of use as the forefront of when you’re sitting there giving an assessment, letting them wander around the farm, what would be the three top values that you keep in the forefront?

Johanna:

Definitely compassion. I believe everything starts with compassion. Trust, I want them to trust me and feel comfortable with me because if we don’t- if we can’t establish that trusting relationship, they’re not going to feel comfortable at the farm. And the third one, that’s a good question. Definitely trust and compassion. And I really try, I don’t know if this would be a value for me, but I try to see strength, strength in my clients.

Alicia:

That’s a good one.

Johanna:

Because I really believe that they’re in there. Oftentimes you look at dementia as they’ve lost so much. So I want to try to find their strengths, even if I have to really dig it out because there is something there. You can always find at least one thing.

Eileen:

Well, I’m going to add an observation here. A big L-O-V-E because-

Alicia:

Yes! Love.

Eileen:

It’s L-O-V-E. It’s love for humankind.

Alicia:

Yes.

Eileen:

The love and passion from your heart and soul that you’re pouring out into people’s life. It’s love when people are coming to your farm and they’re volunteers, they’re being valued. There has to be inside of you, when you say compassion, I say compassion and love are very close. But what was the love and the passion and the visual that you had? How excited were you after you went to that organic farm to say, “I need to do this.” What drove you? Because I think it’s grace or it’s a higher power or it’s something inside of us, but you are changing lives here. And I would love to hear what the path was there.

Johanna:

Thank you. It was a hard conflict. Something kept pulling me to it. For a while, I was still in my doctoral program, but anytime I would go to write a paper, I’d be working on something for this idea for Memory Farm. I started creating little logos, and my mom said, “you have to choose one. Where is your heart at?” And my heart just kept getting drawn back to Memory Farm.

Johanna:

I didn’t know what it could do at the time or what it would be, but I just felt like something, I don’t know what it was, inside of me was like, this is what I need to pursue. And I spent so much time working to get into the doctoral program. I applied to like 20, only got into two. And I was so excited when I got into one. Before that, I spent years building my CB research files so I could be competitive enough. I got my master’s degree. My whole career path was laid out to get into this doctoral program. And then I get in, and I drop out. But that’s how strong the pull was towards Memory Farm.

Alicia:

Dr. Eileen and I know how hard it is to get into the program. It’s extremely hard. And then when you in there, it’s even harder because you got to get all that work done.

Johanna:

I know, my mom thought I was crazy, but she was very supportive.

Alicia:

One of the questions I would like to ask you is, how do you kind of get this relentless for the pursuit of a common mission for something that you’re trying to accomplish at the farm?

Johanna:

It’s something that’s just like deep empowered- deep inside of me. There’re so many times where I wanted to just give up, but I think what keeps me going and keeps me pursuing the mission of the farm is seeing the impact it’s making.

Eileen:

Yeah. I can’t imagine the impact it’s making. After I learned about this wonderful environment you’ve created, I just think the world needs to know about it. I’m just so passionate about it and how it is just at the forefront of a disease that is impacting millions, hundreds of millions of families around the world, and to see an environment where they visit, valued…and life comes back. It’s just life…not only life-changing for families and the person but the world. And it just really excited me when I knew you were going to be a guest, because it goes back to love and compassion, and you were getting pulled by your higher power of some sort because this is a wonderful, wonderful organization you set up.

Johanna:

Thank you. Thank you.

Alicia:

And it takes a level of love. Love what you do and it doesn’t bother you at all. You can get up every day, stay up late, and do it. I think the most rewarding is that you can see the change, or see how you help the people. You can see the fruit of your labor, the joy in the people. So how would one get connected to The Memory Farm? Cause that would be my question to you for our listeners. Because oftentimes there are so many great organizations, and most people don’t even know about them. So how would someone get involved?

Johanna:

They could either email me, it’s memoryfarm85@gmail.com. We have a website, memoryfarmllc.com. And we also have a Facebook page and it’s under Memory Farm, and we post a lot of cute pictures of goats. So if you need some humor in your day, it’s a good Facebook page to follow.

Eileen:

Do you do goat yoga, which I’ve seen some pictures on Facebook?

Johanna:

I’ve done goat yoga, and we do goat chair yoga. So it’s really fun.

Eileen:

Oh, cool. I know when I first saw goat yoga, I’m like, “what’s going on here?” But one of my friends did it and said it was quite an experience.

Johanna:

That’s it, it is an experience. It really is, yeah. Our clients love it. I think it’s nice because they get to sit in the chairs and if they are getting too tired, they can take a break and then just go in and feed the goats.

Eileen:

As you lead The Memory Farm, what attributes and growth trajectories do you see that could occur with this wonderful organization?

Johanna:

We would like to expand. What I hear a lot from my care partners is that they wish we had more services like respite, where they could bring their loved ones to stay overnight. My dream is to someday grow this into an assisted living memory care, to have the first environment like this, that is in a skilled facility where people could come live here. And the care partners can know that they’re going to a place where their loved one is happy. It’s pretty unusual when it comes to any type of memory care that the person actually likes going, and our clients don’t like to leave. So, that would be the dream at some point is to grow it into a larger facility.

Alicia:

Wow.

Eileen:

Thank you so much, and keep that vision and dream because the more people hear about this, the more they’ll want family members in that environment where there’s open-air, there’s mother nature, there’s living creatures, all that.

Johanna:

Yeah.

Alicia:

Yes. Yes. And just a sense of freedom there in the open air and just the mother nature and probably just a sense of serenity there at the farm. And I like it that you said that people come there and don’t want to leave. Fear is another testament to the culture and environment that you built. So as we get ready to end, we always like to ask our guests to leave words of wisdom with our listening audience. So what would be some words of wisdom?

Johanna:

My clients always say to me, “I am a work in progress.” And I always say back, “well, of course, you are, we all are. And we will be our whole lives.” I think it is important to remind yourself that we’re never going to be perfect. But as leaders, we need to constantly polish our own worth in order to better understand ourselves, so we can be an example for others to do the same. Especially others who are trying to lead.

Eileen:

That is breathtaking. I mean, you’re hitting it right on. We’re always growing. We’re always changing. We’re always not perfect. You are definitely a soulful leader because leading with your soul is being authentic, spiritual, which is compassionate and a servant leader, which you hit all three of them on the dot. And those words of wisdom are just beautiful.

Alicia:

Yeah. Yeah. And that one wisdom nugget and saying that we’re never going to be perfect, right there. It really helps me to keep things in perspective. I’m not going to be perfect.

Johanna:

And that’s okay because you have something to work toward. I think that makes us better leaders to show that to the people we’re leading like we’re not perfect and that’s okay.

Eileen:

Thank you for joining us on the Soul of a Leader Podcast. We are igniting a new way of leading with your soul, and interviewing ordinary people with extraordinary impact. Thank you for listening to the stories of our leaders who will help and guide you on your leadership journey. For more information on our podcast, please visit our website at http://www.soulofaleader.com. Thank you for listening.